


The Sun Also Rises, If You Know What I Mean

by gayfranzkafka



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Hawkeye & B.J. established relationship, M/M, this is my au parodying the son of a bitch Hemingway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:42:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25409377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfranzkafka/pseuds/gayfranzkafka
Summary: Do you think Hemingway is a crusty bigoted old son of a bitch? Do you wonder what would happen if Jake (the character which sort of stands in for himself in The Sun Also Rises) were the patient-of-the-week for the fine doctors of the 4077?_____________“Oh, you’re disgusting,” Margret said. She drained what was left of her drink and handed the glass over to be refilled.“Not as disgusting as that dear patient of ours, though,” B.J. said.“He’s not disgusting so much as pathetic,” Margret said. “He asked me if I had a man and then tried to insinuate that you two were pansies. I told him to stop slandering you.”“Aw, Margret, why’d you ruin our fun?” Hawkeye said. The doctor was hanging off of B.J. as though B.J. were a man he had just met in a bar and he himself were a loose woman. “I want that son of a bitch to know it was a pansy Jewish doctor that saved his sorry life.”
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Comments: 12
Kudos: 74





	The Sun Also Rises, If You Know What I Mean

**Author's Note:**

> CW: brief anti-semitism which the doctors do not let slide, Jake grabs Margaret's arm at one point which she also does not let slide

The first helicopter ride of Jake’s life he had during the war. He had lots of new experiences in the war and this was another. O’Reilly got on the intercom and said the same words he always did. The doctors who had been drinking in their tent and the nurses who had been drinking in theirs all ran toward surgery. Jake wasn’t bleeding to death, so they didn’t take him in first. The pain was so that he didn’t yet know what had happened to him, or what would happen to him, and so he lay on the stretcher on the ground and waited for the doctors to come and do something about the pain.

During the operation it was all right because they gave him something so he didn’t feel anything anymore. What he really wanted was absinthe, he thought, but then he felt himself going under and it didn’t matter anymore. The next time he was aware of himself he was in the tent with all the other men with bandages and he realized he was one of the men who had been bandaged.

The doctors came to tell him what had been done to him, and what they had saved and what they hadn’t.

“You know, I used to think the war was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Jake told them.

The doctors looked at one another and then back at Jake again. “Did you?” one of the doctors said. The doctor’s name was Hawkeye, and the other’s name was B.J.

“If you’re seeing another country, and fighting for something good, war can make something of you.”

“Well that’s certainly one way to put it,” Hawkeye said.

“I thought we were fighting fascism here, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Ah, B.J., we’ve unlocked the secret! All the young American imperialists just need to get their dicks blown off and then they’ll start to reconsider their stance on invading other countries!”

B.J. gave Hawkeye another look. “Let’s try to be a little sensitive here. The kid is dealing with a pretty grievous injury.”

Jake knew, then, that these doctors were like all other doctors in war. It was as good as trying to talking to a woman about war, trying to talk to civilians in the field who had not known battle themselves. “I used to think I knew a thing or two about fighting,” he said now more to himself than to the doctors. “But my friend Robert Cohn is the best boxer I know, and that’s despite being a Jew. Maybe that’s just how the world is now.”

“Never mind what I said before, Hawkeye. I take it back. I don’t think sensitivity is the thing this guy needs. I believe you that Robert is a good boxer, although I don’t see why that’s ‘in spite of his being a Jew,’ but I’ve got a pretty mean right hook myself. Maybe I can try it out on you and you can tell me which of us is better. I have trouble believing Robert hasn’t hit you himself at some point, so I’m sure you’ve already got firsthand experience with his skill as a reference. Maybe another sock in the face will set your mind to rights.”

B.J. looked about to raise his fist, but the other doctor put a hand out to stop him. Hawkeye said, “Believe me, Beej, I’d hit the guy myself if I didn’t think he was too lousy to waste breaking a lifetime streak of pacifism on. Let’s go look at the other patients.”

Jake watched them leave and was glad to watch them go. Hawkeye had not taken his hand away after he had staid the other doctor from violence. The two doctors continued to hold hands as they spoke with another patient. Jake was not surprised to hear that the doctor was a pacifist and wondered if this unusual proclivity in a man perhaps gave way to others.

The doctors spoke with the others in the room. Jake did not hear what they said but instead looked at the ceiling. The ceiling of the tent was green canvas, and it sloped down at a steep angle. There was the smell of antiseptic in the tent but also the smell of warm dirt, which has a particular smell you will only come to recognize if you have spent days in the hot sun with nothing more to do than to smell the dirt in which you are sitting. Jake smelled it now as he had in the field before he was shot.

He continued to stare at the ceiling after the doctors left. There were other men around him, but he didn’t want to speak with them, and they did not want to speak with him. Some of their heads lolled in a stupor of pain. Jake knew that to think of your injury was to make it worse. He did not think of his injury, and he did not think of the pain, but instead continued to look at the ceiling.

Night came eventually, and the sound of owls with it, and a nurse came to Jake to check on him. He was glad to see her face; it was the first thing he had been glad of all day. She was not quite as young as he thought nurses ought to be, for her expression was serious. She was old enough that she thought it her job only to check the charts or take the temperatures of the men; she had forgotten that it was a comfort to men in wartime to see the smile of a woman sitting beside their bed.

Though she did not smile, she was still a woman, and Jake could not help thinking of Brett when he saw this other woman. Reaching out, he put a hand on her arm. She frowned at him but listened as he spoke. “Can I ask you something, miss?”

“That’s Major to you, and depends what you’re asking,” she told him in a much sterner voice than he had imagined for her.

“Do you have a man in your life?”

She frowned at him now even more. “I do, in fact. Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott, so I’ll thank you to keep your hands and your ideas to yourself.” She then brushed his hand from her arm with more force than was usual for a woman.

“That’s not why I’m asking,” Jake told her.

“Well, why are you asking, then?”

“It’s just, I have a woman of my own back home, or at least I think I still do. And I worry what my… injury will mean for us.”

“Well, I don’t really think it’s appropriate for me to be having such a discussion with a patient. Ask your doctor about these medical concerns.”

“I didn’t want to have this discussion with them. I don’t find them to be quite right.”

“Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean.”

“They told me they were pacifists. I don’t think men like that are fit to serve in the army. And it seems to me that their pacifism has led them toward other less-than-manly proclivities, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I do mind your saying,” the woman told him, and then, contradicting herself in the confusing way that women did, she added “I agree their pacifism is ridiculous and they are not army men in the least, but your hints of their other proclivities is slander and I’ll thank you to keep it out of your mouth. And they’re the damn finest doctors I’ve ever known. You were lucky to have them work on you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other patients to attend to.”

With her departure, Jake thought to himself that she was nothing and everything like Brett. He occupied himself the next few hours composing sentences in his head of banal comparisons between women that he supposed many men would be glad to read if it he were to make it out of this war and back to his other life as a writer.

***

Margaret finished her shift and left the tent. She found the doctors in the officer’s club. They had been drinking for quite a while and were now drunk. Though she was a woman, she ordered a drink of her own. She drank it down quickly, despite the bitter taste, as if to catch up to the men.

“How was your shift, Margaret? That anti-Semitic, son of a bitch patient Jake give you any trouble?” B.J. asked her.

“As a matter of fact, he did.”

“I swear, some of the things that come out of these patient’s mouths almost make me regret saving them,” Hawkeye said.

“Pierce, it is our _sworn duty_ to save the lives of these men _despite_ any of our personal feelings toward—“ Margaret began.

Hawkeye cut her off, holding up a finger and saying, “I said _almost_ regret, Margaret. Please don’t make me recite the Hippocratic oath now to prove I still know it. That’s one sobriety test I definitely won’t be passing tonight.”

“Oh, you’re disgusting,” Margaret said. She drained what was left of her drink and handed the glass over to be refilled.

“Not as disgusting as that dear patient of ours, though,” B.J. said.

“He’s not disgusting so much as pathetic,” Margaret said. “He asked me if I had a man and then tried to insinuate that you two were pansies. I told him to stop slandering you.”

“Aw, Margaret, why’d you ruin our fun?” Hawkeye said. The doctor was hanging off of B.J. as though B.J. were a man he had just met in a bar and he himself were a loose woman. “I want that son of a bitch to know it was a pansy Jewish doctor that saved his sorry life.”

“Yes, well, we can’t have word getting around too far. I don’t want you discharged. As much as I think you’re all running the camp into the ground I regrettably don’t have enough hands to pass myself clamps while I operate. And speaking of hands, of course that, well, son of a bitch, as you called him, was grabbing at my arm and everything.”

“I really would like to hit him,” B.J. said. “I’m off the clock so it won’t count as breaking my oath, right?”

Margaret waved her hands at him. “Oh, don’t bother. He wasn’t so much into me as projecting his worries about his girlfriend back home onto me.”

At this, Hawkeye gave an unmanly giggle. “We should be a little kinder, I suppose. The man did lose his dick in the war.”

“Yes, and he seems to think the only way to a woman’s heart is through his dick,” Margaret told them. “That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Oh, and what is the way to a woman’s heart?” Hawkeye asked. “I’ve never known. I suppose it’s through some grand declaration of love?”

“Well, no, but the mouth is involved, if you know what I mean,” Margaret told him.

At this, Hawkeye laughed again. Again it was a laugh that would have become a schoolgirl more than a doctor in a war. “I’ll remind you that my boyfriend’s name _is_ B.J., so yes, I think I do know what you mean. Who would have imagined that our doctor-ly duties might one day include educating a man in the fact that there are other ways to make love to a woman. I mean, really, us of all people. If we know, I don’t see why our pal Jake doesn’t.”

“Well, what if we don’t educate him?” B.J. said.

“What do you mean?” Pierce asked.

“I mean, what if we go there with all sorts of grim statistics about what, uh, dick loss can do to marriages and so forth. Tell him we just want him to know the facts so he can prepare himself. He may have been shot in the dick but we can leave it to him to shoot himself in the foot when he gets home. I mean, with how delightful his personality is, the loss of his dick is probably the least of his girlfriend’s concerns.”

“Oh, you’re so bad, B.J.!” Pierce said. “That’s perfect! I’m sure we can whip up some horrible-looking pamphlets. Although, on second thought, maybe we’d better wait till we’re sober if we want them looking professional.”

“Yes, but what is it that everyone loves to say Hemingway said? Write drunk, edit sober?” B.J. grabbed a cocktail napkin and a pencil. The three medical professionals gathered around this small napkin and went to work setting down falsified statistics. They drove themselves nearly to hysterics. The only admirable thing about their behavior that night was the amount of alcohol they drank. They drank like real men, even though none of the three of them was. At a late hour, the man serving drinks kicked them out of the tent and they stumbled the short way to their beds.

The next morning, the doctors and head nurse went to greet Jake. They sat with him and told him grimly of what his future might hold. He was not surprised because he had never had a good way with women to begin with. Though they were such simple creatures, to hang onto one in your life was hard. He had always felt that he, as a free-spirited white man, had been given less than was fair by the universe. This grievous injury and all that awaited him afterwards only served to confirm this.

“Well, thank you, doctors,” he said. “I suppose you try your best even given the deficiencies in your world view.”

“I’d say the same of you, if I were feeling generous,” Hawkeye told him. "But I'm not."

A few days later, Jake was transported stateside, one thin sheet of ill omens in the form of statistics in his back pocket.


End file.
